Neoquest II: Simulated Real Love
by dietlimepepsi
Summary: Rohane, Mipsy, Talinia, and Velm are in simulated reality of the lost desert. Velm is critically injured, and Rohane reveals that he has fallen in love with fellow crewmember Lieutenant Mipsy. Rohane must confront whether or not the events of these computer-generated programs can be intertwined with those of the real world. (Rating changing to M in later chapters)
1. Chapter 1: After the Battle

The severed head and bodies of the rattlecobrall squirmed in the hot sand, venomous fluids and blood spraying out from its hissing mouth, until its blood-red eyes finally stood still and it ceased to move no more. The two halves of its burnt, arrow-covered body laid next to the bodies of three other rattlecobralls.

Rohane stabbed his silver blade down into the sand before him, using it to support his weight as he gasped heavily for air. Sweat poured down his furrowed brows. His chain mail armor had protected him from the worst of the attacks, but he had been bitten on his sword-wielding arm right below his sleeve. The second rattlecobrall had leaped at Mipsy with its fangs brandished, and he had jumped in the way at the last second to protect her. He had managed to deal a finishing blow to the last rattlecobrall in spite of the extreme agony in flexing his penetrated muscles, and now his whole arm was in unbearable agony. He cursed the weight of his armor and the heat of the Lost Desert afternoon sun.

He heard the light footsteps of Mipsy run to his side and take hold of his good arm. His body swayed to the side and she steadied him, her knees nearly buckling under his weight as she supported him down onto the sand. He felt his head in her lap as she ripped a piece from her robe and immediately begun to bandage his injured arm. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Rohane, you idiot… You're always doing this."

Rohane's expression softened, his eyes still squeezed shut. Mipsy had finished bandaging his arm. He felt the blue acara lean down momentarily, her horns blocking out the sunlight for an instant, and a kiss planted onto his forehead. He detected the faint scent of lavender.

Mipsy was ok. Talinia was ok. Velm was…

Rohane's eyes shot open and he scurried to his feet. Velm was not ok.

Velm was in the worst shape from the battle. A rattlecobrall had wrapped itself around his staff and then sank its fangs deeply into his stomach. The front of his white clerical robe was tattered and stained with blood as he was sprawled on his back, knees bent in extreme pain. His face was twisted up in mortal agony, and his breath emerged in shallow gasps. Talinia was by his side, hands on top of each other on the cleric's and trying to stop the bleeding.

"We have to get to the next city before night falls. It's almost evening." Rohane took his sword and slipped it back into his sheath. His arm throbbed with every word he spoke, but he was vital and conscious and able to fight. "Talinia, you have to be prepared with your ranged attacks in case there are monsters in the distance. I'll carry Velm."

Talinia gently lifted Velm's upper body off of the ground so that Mipsy could bind up his torso. Then Mipsy held the Velm's staff at Rohane lifted his teammate with his good arm around the techo's back and his damaged arm below his legs. He knew better than to do a shoulder carry, as he did not want to aggravate Velm's injury. Velm weakly slid one arm around the white blumaroo's shoulders, his other arm wrapped protectively around his stomach.

"Thank you... I'm sorry, I should have been on better guard…" Velm muttered, his head supported against Rohane's worn shoulder plates. "Fuck, this really hurts…"

"You are going to be ok, Velm. We're not pissed off at you… at least not severely." Rohane started to follow Talinia, who had taken the lead back to the city. He shifted the weight of Velm in his arms onto his good arm. "But don't you dare give out on the way back to the city. It's a bitch for me to have to carry you. Don't make that a failed investment."

"Good thing… being a vegetarian… makes me light… right?" Velm tried to smile, but winced as another wave of sharp pain hit his stomach injury. Cold sweat poured down his forehead. Being a techo, he was by nature cold-blooded and had no way of self-regulating his own temperature if night were to fall before they reached the city. Last time Mipsy had started a fire in the desert, he had slept so close to the flame that the trail of his robe caught on fire and Talinia, who was on guard, had to step on him to put out the fire.

"Fuck you and your weird-ass dietary habits, Velm." Rohane sighed. He was tired and wanted to just shut up and walk, but he wanted to keep Velm listening and talking – a reassurance that he was alive. "I doubt that anyone in this current century even understands what vegetarianism is. The owner of the last inn probably thought that you were either a nimmo wanna-be or too delicate to digest gracklebugs."

"Keeping my old habits… keeps me at ease." Velm stroked the ripped front of his robe. "It's a reminder to myself of who I really am… Lieutenant Velm. A reminder that I have an identity in the real world, in the spaceship where the real me without any powers, without this wound, is attached to a simulator machine… These things become hard to remember sometimes while in these simulations, so I have to use my old habits as reminders… Do you have anything to help you remember?"

Rohane thought about it long and hard.

"It's got to be… Lieutenant Mipsy." The white blumaroo finally responded, after a few minutes of silence. Talinia and Mipsy were walking ahead far enough to not hear their conversation.

"How so?" Velm cocked his head in curiosity with a grin. Some spark had returned to his yellow eyes.

Rohane took a while to mentally process this again. Out of all the extensive training he had to undergo to become a captain, there was nothing that taught him how to express his emotions. He had spent countless sleepless nights at the academy, fueled by neocola to wash down blue pills that he did not have a legal prescription for, cleaning bathrooms at the Neovilla to partially pay for his student loans. That was followed by his underdog days at Virtupets after he was one of the ten students selected from a competitive population of twenty thousand applicants, learning to smoke Neocigars to make connections with the upper division. And then ten years without a single vacation later, he became the youngest captain in the history of Virtupets.

And then, for his latest mission, he met Mipsy.

"Mipsy… She… made me question what I was doing with my life." Rohane shifted more of Velm's weight onto his good arm again. He was carrying a fading Velm through sand dunes in the Lost Desert, fighting through a life-or-death simulation to save their ship and crew from sure destruction. He had been in plenty of dangerous situations and plenty of simulations before, but now the weariness of his mind was about to rival that of his body. He needed to unwind. "I went through all I had to go through to get to where I am now, and I never had the time to stop and think about why I am here. But now with her, it's… different. This is great; I can't even put together a coherent sentence anymore. Why aren't there any Neocigars in these simulations? I could really use some fucking tobacco right now."

Velm smiled. "You're in love with her, aren't you?"

Rohane stared ahead at Mipsy. Her green robe and wizard's hat against her bubblegum-blue fur stood out against the flood of red on the sand dunes from the setting sun. He remembered "meeting" her in the first Meridell simulation he went under in his current mission – after his single-handed defeat of Zombom and crossing the White River, how the sassy young acara wizard had joined him on his adventures without further question even though both of them had forgotten each other – and what the actual reality was – inside that simulation.

Rohane had wondered at some point on what would have happened if instead of fulfilling their simulation duties of defeating Ramtor – that he had brought her home to his "home" in Trestin and they just lived together like that. Would the simulation have gone on forever? Would that simulation have replaced their new reality? How many days, months, years would they be together until the ship in the authentic world crashed and everything came to a sudden halt?

"We're all going to win this. We shall emerge victorious. We are all going to get back to Virtupets safely." Rohane said with determination. "And then, I… I am going to ask Mipsy to marry me."

"Since when have you decided on that?" Velm pondered.

"After the first simulation we went through." Rohane stared at the silhouette of Mipsy ahead of him, and then looked back down at the sand. "We had forgotten our real selves in that simulation. We were convinced that we were our fictional identities. But we found each other, and then…"

"And then?"

Rohane sighed. "Why the fuck aren't you unconscious yet."

"Because this is much too interesting of a story! Come on, I can't possibly pass out yet." Velm seemed partially revived by Rohane's story. "What happened between you and Mipsy in the Meridell simulation?"

"I can't believe you are having fun while in this kind of demoralizing circumstance." Rohane raised an eyebrow. "For the sake of politeness, please don't go shouting it around when we get back to the city and you go completely delirious from blood loss. Mipsy and I… or rather, the characters that we thought we were in these simulations… we got together."

"Got together?" Velm started to chuckle, but then winced and pressed his stomach in pain again. "My god, I am so jealous. All I got out of the simulations were bruises and cuts and confusion and getting lost and now… this."

"I'm surprised that a creature of your disposition isn't permanently celibate, Velm." Rohane rolled his eyes and felt tempted to drop the techo. "Yes, we had relations. But… now that we realized that it was all a computer-generated simulation in which we both coincidentally lost our sense of self and reality, I believe that we are now both questioning whether any of that was real or not. Yes, I loved her in the real world to begin with. But what I'm disappointed in was that it took a simulation and me playing the role of some unreal Rohane with a fictional back-story to actually develop our relationship. Which is why as soon as we get out of these simulations and save the ship, I… will not hold back anymore."

"Why not now?"

"None of this is… authentic. Even though we both remember now what we didn't remember back in the Meridell simulation, it doesn't change how we are still just characters in a simulation right now." Rohane replied. "Plus, that is far from our priority right now."

Velm looked down at the gauze tied around his abdomen. The whiteness of his clerical robe was so bloodied that it was ambiguous whether the rattlecobrall's bite had stopped bleeding. "What if this happened?"

"What do you mean? This already happened – that's why I'm carrying your loud and obnoxious self all the way back to the city, and why I can't even feel my right arm anymore…"

"No, as in…" Velm's voice became very solemn all of a sudden, almost with a tremble. "What if it didn't happen to me? What if this happened to another one of us?"

"Well, first of all… as long as we are still in battle, and you aren't dead, and it's not something this serious, you could heal them. And really now, nothing nearly this serious has happened thus far to anyone. Ok, my fight with Zombom came close – I had a compound fracture and a serious concussion, but I had to crawl myself back to White River City and nobody was there to cradle me." Rohane rolled his eyes again.

Velm stared up at the white blumaroo, evidently waiting to hear something. Rohane breathed in deeply.

"And… I won't let Mipsy get hurt. I won't ever let her die. As long as I exist, I will protect her with my life."

Velm smiled. His breaths grew fainter as the sun began to set. "That's good, Rohane… That's what I wanted to hear. You're strong. Don't make the same mistake that I made before… Don't repeat my mistake, ever…"

"What do you mean? What mistake?" Rohane asked, authentically curious, but Velm did not reply. The red techo's head rolled back as the pain and blood loss from his injury finally took away his consciousness. Rohane, alarmed, shook the cleric mage in his arms around. "Velm? Velm? Answer me! Stay awake and show me that you're alive, god fucking damn it! Velm?"

He was right about to call out to Talinia and Mipsy, when he heard them call out for him instead.

"Rohane!"

He looked up. There were four – not three – rattlecobralls before the eyrie and acara. Talinia was standing protectively ahead of Mipsy with an arrow drawn, ready to shoot. Mipsy looked back at him, her eyes glowing with fear and anticipation. Rohane's heart stopped in his chest.

The rattlecobralls recoiled and all leapt at once.


	2. Chapter 2: The Same Mistake

In a swift movement, Talinia fired a wave of arrows at once towards the leaping rattlecobralls. Three arrows met their predisposed destinations, two striking their targets in the tail and one striking a rattlecobrall in the head – impaling through its eye socket. The rattlecobrall that has been struck through its eye fell to the sand twitching, snarling.

But there was one more rattlecobrall that had narrowly missed Talinia's arrows. It hissed and leapt again towards Talinia and Mipsy, fangs bared and ready to bite. Mipsy held up her wand, eyes focused upon her target.

"Obliterate!"

The attacking rattlecobrall in mid-air combusted from the inside, leaving behind a trail of organs and venomous fluids as its dismembered head continued to fly towards Talinia via momentum. Talinia held her bow and swatted the fangs-bearing head away from her. It landed behind the eyrie and acara, plummeting down next to where Rohane stood – still carrying an unconscious Velm.

Rohane placed Velm onto the ground and drew his sword. He pulled the bandage from his sword arm. He could not afford to be held back right now. He took a few steps forward, and then charged.

One of the two rattlecobralls that has been shot in the tail has tackled Talinia to the ground. Talinia was on her back with arms outstretched, holding the rattlecobrall's mouth open and far from her face with effort as the creature's fangs dripped venomous fluids onto her fur. Rohane sliced his sword through the back of the creature's head and swiped down, slicing part of the creature in two. Talinia tossed the spliced rattlecobrall away from her before quickly scrambling to her feet, wiping the chunks of rattlecobrall fluid from her fur and leather armor.

The other rattlecobrall shot through the tail was attacking Mipsy swiped its body towards Mipsy's legs. The sharp contact knocked her legs out from under her and she fell to her side, wincing. Before the rattlecobrall could draw its head back to bite, it was impaled to the ground by one of Talinia's arrows. Mipsy raised her wand from the ground and gave the dying creature one last zap, and it lay still.

Just as Rohane thought that the battle had been declared, he heard a loud and dull thump from behind Talinia. As Talinia turned around in shock, she saw that Velm had gained back consciousness, grabbed ahold of his staff, and taken out the rattlecobrall with the penetrated eye socket that they had erroneously presumed to be dead. The creature had been on the verge of sinking its fangs into her wing.

"Hey, what? I didn't get enough of my daily exercise yet." Velm gave a painful smile, and then slowly doubled over as he put a hand over his wounded middle again. "Oh shit… that reopened quickly…"

As Talinia quickly stepped forward to catch the techo from falling, Rohane ran over to Mipsy.

"Mipsy… Are you hurt anywhere?" He put his sword back into his sheath and quickly knelt by her side. He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms, but he did not permit himself.

Mipsy lifted the hem of her robe to over her knees. Rohane tried to avert his eyes from looking further up. There was a purple bruise on her leg from where the rattlecobrall had swiped her legs from underneath her. "I'm fine. It didn't bite me. I can totally walk. Let's get Velm back."

"It's getting late." Talinia looked up towards the darkening sky. "We may not able to get close to the city by the time night falls. When night falls, it will become too dangerous to travel."

"Damn rattlecobralls." Rohane stood up and helped Mipsy up by her arm, trying hard to ignore the bolt of electricity that shot up through his body the moment he touched her.

"Let's set up camp."

An hour later, they had set up camp within a rock formation that Talinia spotted within the endless sand dunes. They found a concave area of the rock formation, and Rohane and Talinia sealed up the opening with large slabs of stone after they entered. Mipsy set a fire in the center of the makeshift cave. They laid Velm close to the fire, but he was still shivering underneath his tore clerical robes.

Rohane volunteered to be on watch that night. He was not particularly in the mood for sleep anyways. Talinia said goodnight, and went to a corner of the makeshift cave to sleep. She was weary from the day's battles and exploration.

Mipsy stuck her wand at the fire and spoke a few magical words to make it burn brighter. Rohane sat on the ground, removing his uncomfortable armor plates one by one and observing the orange glow of the fire reflected against the acara's bubblegum blue fur. Then suddenly Mipsy reached down and pulled her robes over her head, displaying to Rohane every curve in full view. Rohane's eyes widened and his throat subconsciously gulped.

Mipsy draped her robes over Velm as a cover, and turned to Rohane with one eyebrow raised. "It's so that Velm doesn't pass away from hypothermia. What are you looking at?"

Rohane reached down and took off his brown cloth vest from over his green long-sleeved peasant shirt. Mipsy stepped back a little, almost defensively, until Rohane handed it to her. He tried his best to look down and not at her body. "Here… wear this. Cover yourself up, damn it."

"Th... Thanks." Mipsy put on Rohane's vest. It draped over her small body like a sleeveless dress. Rohane wondered how long it had been since Mipsy wore a dress in the real world. Apart from in these computer simulations, he had never seen her in anything except for her generic Virtupets gray work uniform.

He remembers how her body had felt like against his, the night in the Meridell simulation – at the inn in the Village at Seaside. They were a white blumaroo young hero and a blue acara wizard, both having forgotten that they were in a simulation and convinced that they were the characters they played. There was only a guest room with one double-sized bed in the small inn ran by the pirate scorchio innkeeper. He had sat on the bed as she stood over him, applying a bandage over a shoulder wound that he had received from the dire lupe they just defeated, and then he had pulled her into himself and kissed her. He could not describe the courage that suddenly drove him to take the bold and unwarned step forward, but she had stared into his black eyes for a second and then kissed him back, sitting on him and straddling his waist. Later that night, both her hands were held tightly in his as they made passionate love.

They spent three nights in each other's arms before they defeated Ramtor and both woke up in separate rooms of their spaceship, suddenly realizing that they were only characters in a simulation. They quickly returned to work, this time ensuring that they were not forgetting who they really were. They had never talked about what happened in Meridell - in fact, they were mostly silent from then on.

Rohane sighed and threw his head back, staring at the ceiling of the makeshift cave. Perhaps they will never talk about what happened in the Meridell simulation. Not as long as they were hopping through all these other simulations.

"Good night, Mipsy."

"Good night, _Captain_ Rohane."

Mipsy went and laid down close to Talinia, and soon her breathing became soft and regular. Rohane continued sitting there with his head leaned back, then gradually pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, leaning forward.

He had never felt lonely before. In fact, it was like he never experienced loneliness before. He had lived in solitude for all his life with no true friends other than his large social network of "connections" mostly for academic, internship, and work purposes. Back in his university days he would occasionally attend college parties to drink and attempt to de-stress, fuck some usul wearing too much blue eyeshadow and red lipstick from the community college nearby for the night, and then leave the morning after without saying goodbye or leaving a note. But since he met Mipsy, he realized how lonely he truly was – how he yearned to evict that loneliness, how he needed none other than her to fill up his emptiness. And the worst kind of loneliness, he realized, was to have Mipsy in his arms for a moment and then to let go.

He really needed a fucking Neocigar.

"How's the watch?"

Rohane sat up straight immediately. Velm was lying awake next to the fire, draped in Mipsy's robe and curiously observing the white blumaroo on night watch. Rohane had thought that Velm was either asleep or passed out the entire time.

"God fucking damn it, Velm. If you were awake you should have just said so. Mipsy just took off her fucking robe in front of you to cover you with it, because she thought that you lost consciousness again or something. If you had seen-"

"Hey, now, shouldn't you be asking me how I'm doing?" Velm smiled. "Wasn't it so cool how I finished off that last rattlecobrall without anyone expecting it?"

Rohane sighed. "You know Velm… when I kill something off, nobody gives me any credit for it. And when I get hurt, nobody treats me like a delicate little Princess Fernypoo because I can actually take a hit without bleeding all over the place and collapsing…"

Velm chuckled. "Very hilarious, Rohane. How do you have friends again?"

"I don't."

"What was all that about with Mipsy?"

"Mipsy…" Rohane sighed again. He lowered his voice slightly, not wanting the sleeping Mipsy to be awakened, then suddenly remembered something. "Wait, Velm. What did you mean earlier by... the mistake you made, which I shouldn't repeat?"

Still lying on his back next to the fire, Velm stared solemnly at the ceiling of the makeshift cave.

"A few missions ago, I was with a different crew." Velm said after a moment of silence, his usually cheery and dismissive voice now lowered. "One of my colleagues I had known for quite a while previous to this mission. There was nothing particularly going on between us, but I had… loved her from the sidelines for a long time. We were on a final test-run of the simulations system, but something went wrong… and the two of us were stranded within the simulation. We were frightened and convinced that it was the end, but… we ended up falling in love. I thought that there might not be another day to tell her that, so I did."

Rohane breathed in hard. He remembered hearing something regarding a similar incident two years ago. Was Velm actually the one who survived that simulation?

Velm stretched one arm up and covered his eyes.

"Her name is Elaine. She was that pink aisha who… passed away in that famous training accident from a while back that you probably remember. Virtupets was so busy that nobody set aside any time to properly mourn." Velm's voice finally cracked. "I was there when she died. She… fucking died in front of me, while protecting me. I could only play this passive, secondary cleric in battle that has to be shielded by others. I couldn't heal her, because… she was already fully gone. When you die in a simulation, nothing actually happens to your body in the real life, but your mind is just… gone. When I managed to leave that simulation, and I saw her body being transported out under a white sheet… I realized… I had never truly touched her while she was alive in the real world, not even once. It was as if none of our love ever even happened, because it all took place in some crazy simulated world like this one, one which took her away…"

Velm sat up, his vision clouded over. He covered his face with his hands.

"I tried losing myself in work, I tried religion and spirituality, I tried alcohol. I got all this useless pep talk about how I am one of the only in-simulation mage clerics and how fucking important that role is supposed to be, but in the end I failed at my job." Velm breathed in deeply, then winced and held his stomach. "I just want some… confirmation from the universe that our love did happen, but there is none. It's literally all in my head, because it all occurred within a simulation. I fucking hate this job, but I know I can't quit because there is nothing else for me in the world anymore besides my job…"

Rohane scooted over to the techo, and gently pushed him back down. "You need to lie down before you reopen that wound a second time…"

Suddenly Velm grabbed Rohane by the neck and pulled Rohane down to the ground, halfway on top of the red techo. Not letting go of Rohane's neck, he whispered directly into Rohane's ear.

"Do not make the same mistakes."

He let Rohane go, and rolled onto the side to face the fire, his back now turned to the white blumaroo. Rohane rubbed his neck, and slowly shifted himself back to where he originally sat on night guard.

He was already part-way inside that mistake.


End file.
